How to connect a USB Keyboard or Mouse to a rooted Fire TV Stick with an OTG Cable

Since the Amazon Fire TV Stick only has a single micro USB port that’s used for power, Amazon chose to disable the On-The-Go (OTG) capabilities of the device. OTG is a specification that allows you to connect USB peripherals, like keyboards and mice, to a micro USB port that is also used for power. Now that the Fire TV Stick is rootable, it’s possible to enable the device’s OTG feature. While rbox was working on getting TWRP custom recovery working on his new Fire TV Stick, he figured out how to enable OTG, so here’s how to do it.

You’re going to need a micro USB OTG cable with power. Here is the exact one I have which I can confirm works with the Fire TV Stick. I was able to connect the Logitech K400 Keyboard and both the keyboard and touchpad worked. I was also able to connect a separate USB keyboard and USB mouse using a USB hub just fine.

I was unable to mount any kind of external storage. I tried StickMount and several OTG “helper” apps with no luck. Also, enabling OTG support does not survive a reboot, so you’ll need to perform these steps again if you reboot your Fire TV Stick.

Connect your OTG cable to the Fire TV Stick and then connect power to the OTG cable.

You can now connect a USB peripheral to your OTG cable and it should work. Remember, rebooting your Fire TV Stick will disable OTG capabilities, so you’ll have to follow these steps again to re-enable OTG capabilities after rebooting.

I have not tried mounting it manually. Once rbox releases pre-rooted ROMs with SuperSU installed, it will be trivial to write a script that enables OTG on boot because SuperSU has a feature that runs any script on boot. I’m sure there are other ways to do it without SuperSU as well.

Nice work, looks like this could be put in an init type script and run on boot. Wonder if that could also be baked into recovery.

As for the Flirc comment, it does act like a keyboard and that’s how I manage recovery on my AFTV1 now (unlocked bootloader type). This could be another option on firetv stick if the OTG bit can be started right away.

I have rom tool box light and I used scripter to launch the premade script to do this using simple remote clicks easily. I’ll worry about launch at boot when I’m done testing with it.

I connected an ihome non-powered 3port usb hub and a mouse to it. worked great. I then connect a low power usb ethernet adapter from monoprice and networking went from “wifi ssid” to “wired” but it did not get an ip address. I also tried it without hub same results. perhaps another command similar to enableling otb to do the same for wired or I just dont have a compatible driver. it might be missing a file we can just pilfer from the ftv. awesome mod.

usb ethernet works. I went to system\about\network and it did not show any mac for ethernet adapter nor dhcp address info.

I ran terminal from romtoolbox and su, “busybox ifconfig” and saw eth0 was given a lease. I tested network connection and it was fine. altthough I could connect to eth0 via adb I could not run “adb shell” so to answer does usb-ethernet work…yes.

hello, i bought this usb otg cable didnt worked with my mouse/keyboard my mouse get light red but nothing move and the keyboard nothing write into amazon firestick display… any idea why there recomend this one if didnt tested it before? im able if somebody have any idea for fix it? thanks.

I have a Fire Stick running OS version 5.2.1.1 which I ubderstand from AFTV News http://www.aftvnews.com/start/ is not rootable. Therefore I guess the procedure above cannot be implemented. Is there another way to attach a keyboard to the Fire TV Stick

Tried to get otg capabilities enabled on my rooted fire stick tv running is 5.0.5.1 , could not run command su and it said does not exist, so tried command step 5 and said do not have access permission? Any suggestions or help please?

When i go onto network your picture shows a mac address for the lan aswell as wifi which mine doesnt and then it days unable to connect when i go through the terminal set up and type in ‘adb connect …> Any advice thankyou!

Thanks for this great info. I use a script to autorun at start, works perfect. Combined with mouse input through the original remote it´s way better as stock :-)
I use a 4-port USB hub, which has power to the host (Logilink), so I can power the FireTV stick as well as plug in the USB-ethernet adapter and a keyboard with integrated touchpad.
The only thing I miss now, is to be able to plug in an extra USB stick or disk drive. Won´t be recognized by the stick, tried ES Explorer and stuff, to no avail…